Richard Dübell Eine Messe für die Medici (A Mass for the Medici) Nymphenburger, 2000, 460 pp, ISBN 3-485-00835-4 Dark deeds in Florence are the subject of this book. In 1478, as every tourist to the city knows, a group of conspirators from a number of eminent families - the Pazzi, Bandini, Maffei and others - set on Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici, joint rulers of the city, in the church of San Lorenzo, murdering Giuliano. This absorbing historical thriller opens with a description of that event, as witnessed by its hero and narrator, Peter Bernward, a former merchant from Landshut in Germany now visiting Florence with his companion, Jana Dlugosz, a wealthy, successful and somewhat secretive Polish tradeswoman. In the fall-out from the failed conspiracy Jana is arrested and from then on, in his attempts to secure her release, Bernward is in the thick of the Machiavellian murk. His detective work brings him encounters with a variety of colourful figures from the high and low life of Florence. It also leads him up several blind alleys. Could Jana have been framed by another Florentine merchant, Pratini, a friend of the Medici, angry at being outsmarted by her in a deal they had just done in Venice? Or what about Stepan Tredittore, Bernward's assistant, who has fraudulently been passing money from Jana's account to that of a cardinal? Or his son-in-law - can this odd character be quite as wimpish as he seems? Then two more people get murdered. The first is an impecunious sculptor who was an expert in the detection of forgeries. The other, an out-of-work architect, may or may not have been part of the main conspiracy. With each twist of the action Bernward's life becomes more at risk and the whodunit element progressively more baffling until, at the end, an Agatha Christie style denouement, in the presence of Lorenzo de Medici himself, sorts everything and everyone out. Some of the horrors may require a strong stomach, but here is a well-crafted, sophisticated thriller which will appeal to many tastes.